Biggest sleeper cell in North Block: Arun Jaitley

ET Bureau|

Sep 24, 2008, 03.34 AM IST

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NEW DELHI: In its hardest attack on the UPA government, BJP has said the ���biggest sleeper cell in the country is in North Block (home ministry) as it is sleeping when terror activities take place.���

Taking his party���s ���Save India��� campaign to a new pitch, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley suggested that the Congress should ���initiate honest discussions about the current crisis with all political parties and other stake holders.���

In a statement BJP president Rajnath Singh said that the country is ���waiting to see what specific steps the UPA government and its leadership will take to build national resolve, strategic plan and decisive action, both domestically and internationally, to conclusively crush terrorism���.

Mr Jaitley charged the government of reneging on its promise of a stringent law to deal with terror crimes. He alleged that the Congress has driven secularism towards subversion to win over minorities, and in doing so had conceded the nationalist space to the BJP.

Addressing a seminar on the ���state of the nation and terrorism, Mr Jaitley said, ���There has been a perceptible change in the Congress thinking. Earlier the Congress balanced the nationalist and the secularist space. In fact, Indira Gandhi was even ahead of us when it came to issues like Bangladesh....but Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have spoiled the equilibrium between secularism and nationalism.���

Mr Jaitley alleged the Congress has left nationalism behind in its quest for minority appeasement. ���All the nationalist space is now fully with the BJP. Today when it comes to saving the nation from terrorism, it is the BJP which stands up...We want to run our election campaign as the Save India campaign,��� the BJP leader said.

Reiterating the party���s position that the UPA government was soft on terror because of the ���compulsions of votebank politics��� and its coalition partners, Mr Jaitley referred to the support shown to Simi by three UPA constituents.

In elaborating the party���s contention that the government was soft on terror, Mr Jaitley made mention of the ���failure��� of the UPA to formulate ���stringent laws��� against terrorism. ���The government said we will form stringent laws and a federal agency. Advaniji promised full co-operation but they backed out later,��� Mr Jaitley said.

Mr Rajnath Singh���s statement also drew attention to the Centre���s refusal to give its assent to terror laws passed by the Gujarat and Rajasthan state assemblies.

Mr Singh said, "Our plurality and diversity of culture cannot be used as an excuse to create diversity in our approach to deal with the problem at hand. Nor can our plurality of culture be used as an excuse to create diversity in our legal framework to punish the perpetrators of heinous crimes against humanity. If Maharashtra has a set of laws like MCOCA that enable effective administration of justice against the guilty, why should other states like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh be denied similar provisions to tighten the legal sanctions against the guilty? For terror knows no boundaries and acknowledges no humanity."

On the issue of the spread of Islamic terrorism, Mr Jaitley said they could choose the target, timing and venue of the attack at will. He said a disturbing new trend had started in politics where a ���perceptional equality��� is created between those who want to break the nation and those who want unity.

���A comparison is made between SIMI and RSS. Or if Hurriyat wants to breakaway from the country, it is compared to the Shri Amarnath Sangarsh Samiti,��� he said. Commenting on another ���recent phenomenon���, Mr Jaitley said, ���perpetrators of terrorism are being presented as victims.��� He expressed regret that under this ���victimhood syndrome��� terrorists and their families were presenting themselves as ���ostracised.���

Mr Jaitley said under NDA rule India suffered from cross-border terrorism ���but today we are living in an age of home-grown terrorism and we cannot run away from this reality.���